Eating the Book

Abstract

We have seen, then, that the notion of ethics which can be drawn from Lacan is such that the ethical can be reduced neither to an example nor to a prior prescription. It is such that what constitutes ethics or the ethical must reside always with the singular subject in question. Phrased otherwise, ethics, for Lacan, is reducible neither to a model which might be glorified, inflated or simply transposed beyond the particular context in which it might have occurred, nor to an abstraction and inscription which bears no, or no longer bears, any unique relation to any one context. The ethical cannot even be taken to reside in the particular context viewed as an empirical or objective event. The ethical can only ever come to be as that which is assumed by the subject and, thus, only ever is for that subject.